


they can't if you don't let them

by openmouthwideeye



Series: West Eros High [17]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 07:11:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/884430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openmouthwideeye/pseuds/openmouthwideeye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the most salacious gossip to hit West Eros High since Loras had asked Renly to Fall Formal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they can't if you don't let them

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for the wait, guys! I had a killer week trying to get stuff done before vacation, and then my (rather rainy) trip meant a week without the web. Life is going to be erratic for the next few weeks, too, but hopefully I can get back on track with a chapter a week. It is a few pages longer than usual, so hopefully that makes up for it? A little?

Margaery caught Brienne at the side door Monday morning, and the congratulations the blonde had spent the drive carefully cultivating died when she saw her friend’s grim expression.

“I shouldn’t have poked the beast,” the cheerleader admitted, herding Brienne from her typical entrance and around an overgrown cluster of rose bushes. “But if you’d _seen_ her face when she heard about you and Jaime . . .”

Brienne stiffened under Margaery’s navigating hand, wondering what the girl was doing there. The freshly crowned queen should be reveling in the unabashed adoration of West Eros High, not hiding in forgotten shadows in unkempt corners of the school.

Mar paused as Brienne stopped walking; she tossed the sophomore a look that mingled genuine concern with impenitent pragmatism.

“She would have found out either way.”

Sharp pricks erupted across Brienne’s skin, as though her insides were frantic to escape and her outsides were cracking, holding her in. She felt hot all over, like a million eyes were on her and she had actually stood in the rented ballroom to watch acrid realization choking Cersei’s ire. As if she had faced her wrath alone instead of sheltered between the couch and Jaime’s arms.

A tingle echoed through Brienne’s left side, remembered vibrations that itched and stung. It was impossible to forget the texts and calls and voicemails jamming up her inbox. Her fingers twitched, eager for a new message to join the pack, and she dug her nails into her palms just as she had whenever Jaime called.

_It was doomed to fail._ She wasn’t sure if the thought was meant for Margaery or herself. _Might as well help it along_.

Queasiness sucked the heat from her skin, and it settled in her stomach like a dead weight. Numb fingers curled around the outline of her phone through her jeans.

“I didn’t think you’d be there,” her friend said softly.

Brienne’s mind threw Cersei’s face at her, livid green and jaundice, glinting with the cruel red light of her dress. The image wasn’t half as painful as the thought of hot, hazy green, set against gold and smolder and anger in Jaime’s handsome face.

_I_ shouldn’t _have been there_ , some razed part of her agreed. But there was another part, quick and obstinate, that grit its teeth and protested the thought.

Brienne unrooted her feet from the cracked concrete, allowing Margaery to propel her around a weathered white corner. Loras waited at a door near the gym, propped open with a wary hip. He looked over the girls’ shoulders as his sister ushered Brienne in the back door. He had her English textbook under his arm, and Brienne was torn between asking how he’d gotten it and fighting for a calm that had escaped her.

The Tyrells exchanged information wordlessly, flicking eyes and hair and expressions, and then they were moving down the empty hallway toward the liberal arts wing, pulling the blonde along with them.

“What’s wrong?” Brienne asked, throat thick and stance wary.

She watched their easy, alert strides with mounting dread, all too aware of the way the siblings sandwiched her between them. If Margaery’s appearance had spooked her, the pair’s current behavior had alarm crawling up her spine, ragged fingernails scraping each joint of her vertebra as it fought to raise hair along the back of her neck.

“Aren’t you on Facebook?” Most days Loras asked with a snort and a smile, but today his face was deadly serious. Hair fell across his forehead, shading his eyes, and he didn’t bother to brush it back.

Margaery didn’t wait for Brienne’s stumbling denial.

“Cersei,” she spoke delicately, every inch prom royalty, “has exaggerated certain situations.”

The words clawed through Brienne like red painted fingernails, ripping at sutures in her heart already battered by Jaime’s tender touch. Vicious and wounding, even braced as she was for the pain.

“She told people?” Brienne barely heard her own words through the rushing in her ears.

Margaery’s movements were carefully careless. Curiosity clung to her as she cocked a shoulder, but her eyes were all concern. “Her minions really should be getting overtime.”

Moisture fled Brienne’s mouth. Her tongue felt large and ungainly, sticking to her teeth. She wondered what Margaery had heard and how much of it was true.

Saturday surged against the barriers of her mind, an unruly tide of kisses and caresses, the affection in Jaime’s sea green eyes breaking against her walls. Memory rose steadily, threatened to swallow her whole.

The hockey player set her mouth, grit her teeth, and beat it back. Her fingers felt shaky, her arms alive with ghosting exploration and the bitter, angry promise of blows. She wrapped her hands securely around the straps of her backpack, gripping the rough weave until they burned.

“Brienne?”

It was Loras who asked, low and not quite sure. It was Loras she trusted, watching her just as he had two nights before, like he knew her and the world and just how messy things got when she was thrown into it.

He hooked his arm through hers like when they danced at cotillion: solid and resolute, guiding, protection from herself and everything around her.

“I’m fine,” she muttered, not pulling free. Her sneakers squeaked as her feet found their strength; her stance held firm. She took a deep breath and looked down the forgotten hall. “We’re going to be late.”

Margaery glanced briefly at her brother before gliding off ahead of them, taking point on their makeshift line of defense. She stayed well ahead of them, wielding smiles and greetings like well-executed maneuvers, and somehow Loras managed to escort his friend to English without a single comment breaching their formation.

But however they skirted the morning mess, the Tyrells couldn’t save her from first period.

“I’d miss prom, too,” one of Kyle’s teammates was laughing when Brienne walked stiffly into homeroom, clutching her books like a shield, “For the honor of fucking Brienne the Beauty.”

The bell drowned out the low, miserable keen that escaped her, but nothing could disguise the livid blush flaring across her nose, devouring every freckle from her temples to her collarbone. The brittle ends of her hair became stinging nettles against her ears, prodding as if to make certain she’d heard Ben clearly.

“It’s a wonder she didn’t crush him,” his friend joked easily, dropping into a desk as Brienne shuffled back to hers, deftly avoiding eye contact with anything beyond her own dirty sneakers.

“His arm’s already busted.” Ben caught sight of Brienne hunkering beneath her bag, and his grin stretched his face into nearly a leer. “At least he had her face to keep him entertained.” And he contorted his features in a cruel imitation of bliss.

The class came alive as his guffaws swept the corners of the room. Titters rippled across her homeroom and Brienne stumbled, banging her knee on the metal support of her desk. Teeth caught flesh and she tasted blood. Her tongue swelled, pulsing hot drums of pain as the laughter rose and fell, swept back across the room as Brienne sat forcefully enough that her chair screeched on the scratched linoleum.

It was everything she had feared a year before, when a dozen boys Brienne had never met were vying for a spot beside her and Cersei was watching the drama unfold with unveiled glee. Tangled up in her fears and her feelings and _Jaime_ , Brienne had failed to anticipate just what tale the bitter threads in Cersei’s eyes might weave.

_“Who could ever want_ that _?”_

Cersei’s cruel jeer resounded across the year, mingling with the all-too present snickers of her classmates. It echoed across first period and dogged her through her morning classes.Jamie Lannister’s non-prom was the most salacious gossip to hit West Eros High since Loras had asked Renly to Fall Formal. There wasn’t a corner of the school that wasn’t half muffling whispers whenever Brienne walked by.

Even the teachers had some inkling that Brienne had made herself a spectacle. After a humiliating 15 minutes of Mr. V’s cryptic insights and pensive expressions, Brienne declined his usual request of running memos and rose stoically to finish out 4th hour in some forgotten corner of the library.

Taena Merryweather hadn’t shown up on time all semester, but she was lingering outside the counselor’s office when Brienne marched out.

“You know where Cersei found them, right?” she divulged to a girl who might have been anyone. Her eyes boldly met Brienne’s as she relished the words, “ _In_ _her bed_.”

The injustice of it all was an iron slap, cracking Brienne’s mask, letting blood seep through the fissures and pool in the hollows left behind. Brienne couldn’t help it: she locked herself in the girl’s locker room and cried.

Lunch was half over by the time she scrubbed her face clean. Her skin had grown thick long before high school, but she hadn’t forgotten the tricks to hiding tears. Evidence steadily disappeared under her practiced fingers. When she was satisfied that her cheeks weren’t streaked and the rim of her eyes had faded to a dull pink, she took a handful of deep breaths and pushed out into the corridors.

She wasn’t expecting to run smack into Tyrion.

He seemed to be expecting her, though. He craned his neck and the intervening feet seemed suddenly unimportant beneath the pity in his mismatched eyes.

“Follow me,” he demanded as he had a dozen times before, like he expected to a hundred more.

Brienne swallowed to feel the dull ache in her throat. It tightened her resolve.

“No.”

Tyrion frowned, heavy, furrowed brows caught between impatience and concern.

“It’s in your best interest,” he advised, like she was some child to be led to his brother by the hand.

“I told him not to call,” she half grunted the words, a blow careening towards her own ribcage. She tensed and met them squarely.

“He’s a romantic idiot,” Tyrion grumbled. “That damn phone didn’t leave his hand from the moment he dragged his ass home.”

She didn’t know if the words hurt so much because she’d wanted to hear them or because she hadn’t.

“If you knew how many times I talked his thumb off the _send_ button . . .” He shook his head disparagingly, at Jaime or Brienne or some combination of the two.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, working her feet clear of his orbit. “Tell him I’m sorry.”

“He _knows_ you’re sorry,” Tyrion crossed his arms, and his eyes weren’t forgiving anymore. “What he _needs_ is for you to face this with him.”

But Brienne couldn’t do that. As hard as it was to endure scorn hurled with barbed precision, if she and Jaime fought together the gossipmongers would meet them in an all-out attack. They’d be starting a war: a war she wasn’t ready for; a war he couldn’t come back from. And there’d be no going back.

So she mumbled, “I’m sorry,” again, turned, and fled.

Razor-sharp rebuke chased her all the way to history, even if Tyrion didn’t. It lingered in her mind, harrying her as she tried to concentrate on Pre-Calc and World Civ. She abused the cap of her pen to dispel her nervous energy and took far too long gathering her books after school, letting the milling crowds of knowing glances dissipate and wander off.

Brienne turned on her phone as she waited, heart skidding as she wondered if Jaime had finished filling her inbox. It was an odd, relieving sort of disappointment when her only text was from Sansa.

**_Face the front, walk tall <3_ **

More than a few of her ignored calls were from the freshman cheerleader, who had shown her support through silence. Brienne hadn’t heard a rumor all day that hinted at the doubts she’d whispered during the agonizing, pre-prom makeover. She wondered if those secrets would have cut worse for her or for Jaime.

Some buried resolve stirred at the thought. Her first line tenacity warned that if she slipped out the side door now she’d spent the rest of her semester on defense. Last year that might not have mattered. But when her feet shifted toward a forgotten hall she remembered that morning—Loras and Margaery shielding her from the first wave of ridicule—and she found herself moving forward instead.

Her heart reared and raced, knowing as well as she did that whatever waited outside of these halls would hurt as much as everything she’d faced within them. Brienne pushed the doors open anyway, scrunching her brows and squinting as the late afternoon sun blinded her.

When she blinked the whiteness away, Jaime filled the space left behind. He was off to the left, leaning against the hood of his car behind countless clusters of parents and students and faculty. She shouldn’t have even noticed him, across the street in the senior lot with gossip-hungry hoards between them. It was like her eyes refused to see anything else.

He tensed as much as she did when their gazes caught and kept. Her feet stopped dead, but her eyes refused to give ground. His were plaintive, stubborn, pulling her over like some achingly familiar siren’s call, alluring and deadly. If she gave her heart it’s will, the fallout would devastate her a thousand times more than any wrecked sailor.

She turned her head, reclaiming her attention with deliberate effort. She studied the fresh green leaves on the campus’ lazily budding willow trees, and when her eyes drifted back to Jaime, he was tense behind the wheel of his Range Rover, attention caught by some other blonde.

Brienne hadn’t seen Cersei all day, but she had felt her slap in every word falling from mindless mouths, spouting truth and rumor as one. With bile in her throat, Brienne looked over her shoulder.

Cersei looked lethal; even halfway across the quad Brienne could tell that her wordless exchange with Jaime had provoked something fierce. The lithe blonde sauntered forward, deliberately careless, like a lioness stalking a wounded gazelle. Brienne held no illusions about just how helpless her prey was.

“Brienne!”

Only years of hockey practice kept her from jumping at the shout that reverberated across the parking lot. She turned in increments, afraid she’d glance back to find Cersei still descending.

Brienne scanned the cars lining the street, but it wasn’t until he hollered again that she realized she was looking for Robb Stark. He was standing on the frame of his car, forearms propped on the roof, waiting expectantly for her to find him.

Brienne took half a step back before she checked herself, forcing her feet to trudge in his direction. She was uncomfortably aware that most of the lingering students turned with her, watching their new prom king with rapt attention. The others were turning _towards_ her, eagerly anticipating the gossip they’d have by morning.

“Robb,” she greeted warily when she was close enough to speak in an undertone.

Sansa was in the backseat of his BMW. The other bucket was littered with a mess that spelled Arya’s name as clearly as if the girl had been present.

“Hey, Brie,” Sansa gave a little wave, dithering between polite, feigned ignorance and open compassion.

Brienne shrugged and failed at a reassuring smile. She refocused on Sansa’s brother when the attempt tugged at the dry salt tracks, invisible on her face.

Robb had been watching the exchange patiently. Brienne was surprised to realize that he was no longer peering over his car, but walking around it. He paused beside her and spread his hands disarmingly. The sunlight glinted in his auburn curls like the crown tossed up on his dash, and Brienne fought the urge to glance over her shoulder and see if Jaime’s hair was dancing golden around his temples.

“I know the last thing you want right now is company.” Brienne chewed her lip, distracted by her thoughts, and Robb opened the passenger door with an apologetic smile. “But I promise you, my mother can be very convincing.”

Her gaze darted to the empty seat. Brienne blinked furiously as she tried to process the invitation.

“Mom’s planned you a dinner,” Sansa added helpfully.

“I can call her if you’d like,” Robb offered. “If you need some convincing.”

Brienne dug in her heels into the asphalt, the weight of half a dozen eyes still heavy on her shoulders. She nearly shrugged off Sansa’s sympathetic smile and trekked back to her car beneath familiar taunts, pretending she didn’t feel guilty about disappointing Mrs. Stark. Pretending she wasn’t tempted by the thought of her brusque instruction and kind eyes.

In her mind, Tyrion’s frowning disapproval was side-by-side with Jaime’s heated discontent.

_Run away again_ , they goaded.

She climbed into Robb Stark’s sedan, and when he shut the door firmly behind her the fresh murmur of gossip cut suddenly, blissfully silent.

“I’ll picture the Bitch Queen’s face on every puck tomorrow,” Arya promised as she clambered over Brienne to drop into the seat beside Sansa.

As Robb pulled away from West Eros Middle, Sansa objected that Cersei wasn’t queen anymore, and Arya was being nasty besides. Arya snorted and muttered something rude about her sister and Cersei, throwing the new queen in as an afterthought. Brienne felt distinctly uncomfortable by the time they pulled up to the house. The day’s hardships felt distant.

The unexpected _thump_ above her head made her jerk her elbow into the door.

 “Off the roof, acrobat,” Robb grumbled loudly, banging his fist against the ceiling and laughing.

Sansa glared at roof as they piled out of the silver car.

“Bran never quits climbing,” she complained, clearly finding it difficult to scoot from behind the front seat in her short, breezy skirt. Sansa’s little brother waved and disappeared as his sister emerged, leading her guest up the sidewalk.

“Brienne,” Catelyn Stark was waiting at the door, and her children fell into order at a glance. “We’re so pleased you could make it. I’m sorry for the short notice, but sweetie,” she paused, and her expression gentled. Brienne’s throat closed, plagued by the notion that Mrs. Stark knew every slur that had been slung at her all day. “It’s good that you’re here.”

And then her arm was around Brienne’s shoulders, and some raw, inexplicable peace diffused through her skin and settled over the mess of insults that had piled on her that day.

“My husband will be home any minute,” she said as she led Brienne into the house. “You can wait in Sansa’s room, if you’d like, or . . . “ she indicated the living room, connected to the kitchen by a bar.

“I don’t mind.” Brienne latched onto the safety of the room, claiming a barstool. She wasn’t entirely sure what type of relationship she and Sansa shared, but she knew with a dizzying certainty that if she disappeared into Sansa’s room, she’d spill both secrets and tears before the afternoon was done.

“So, Brienne,” Robb slid onto the stool beside her, and Sansa flanked her other side. “What does your dad do?”

Mrs. Stark patted his shoulder, eyes roving over her children with a small, satisfied smile. She bustled around the kitchen while Brienne talked about her dad, distracting herself with one of the few subjects she found comfortable enough not to fumble. Jon wandered in as she was winding down, and Brienne spent ten minutes explaining Selmy’s new strategy before she noticed Sansa had zoned out. It was kind of a relief to ask the redhead how cheer squad was going. Hockey reminded Brienne of Jaime, and Jaime was the last thing she wanted to think about in the refuge of the Stark’s kitchen.

It wasn’t until Mr. Stark got home that Brienne remembered the evening was technically cotillion practice. Her words dried up the minute dinner started. It was hard making conversation with the stern-faced lawyer staring her down from the end of the table, and the formality of the place settings was making her anxious.

She chose her silverware with no more concentration than was necessary, which was more than anyone else needed. Her eyes flicked to Arya and across to Sansa; both were spearing salad with a small, 4-pronged fork, though Arya glared at the greens like they were her personal nemeses.

“Cotillion is going well,” Mrs. Stark encouraged, smiling at Brienne. “How are you liking your new partner?”

“Great,” she said, picking up the outside fork and cautiously filling it with food.

“You’re with Sam, right?”

The question came from Jon, and Brienne remembered to put down her fork and swallow before she answered.

“He’s a good partner.”

“He is,” Jon agreed amiably. “Not a good dancer, though.”

Brienne had learned that at their first lesson. It was weirdly helpful needing to remember the steps well enough to explain them to someone else. And Sam was nice enough that she didn’t really mind teaching him.

She jerked her head noncommittally, and Jon rolled his eyes. It took a minute for her to realize it wasn’t at her.

“He’s hopeless with girls, too. He’s got it for this one girl, Jill, who – “ Jon cut off, eyeing his siblings, who were watching him with various arch expressions. “What?”

And somehow the table erupted in a teasing cacophony, names lobbed across the butter dish faster than Brienne could process. _Ygritte, Jane, Meera, Gendry_. The name _Jaime_ smacked her across the face, and it took her two stuttering heartbeats to realize it had actually been spoken aloud.

The table fell deafeningly silent as Arya dodged Sansa’s elbow, eyes trained on Brienne. The boys had quit bickering to watch the exchange, and Mrs. Stark’s expression warned that her children’s next words might have serious consequences. Mr. Stark was at the end of the table, looking more like a judge than a lawyer, prepared to mete out his wife’s justice. Only little Rickon looked lost, eyes jumping around the table, refusing to miss a second of the action even if he had no idea what was happening.

“You like him, don’t you?” Arya didn’t flinch from the question as Brienne did.

Anxiety blustered through her, swirling around the meager bites of lettuce she’d managed after finding her salad fork.

It was no secret that she found Jaime attractive. No secret that she admired him. No secret that she’d let him kiss her and touch her, then hadn’t spoken to him in two days.

It was all over school, and the people at this table had known longer than anyone.

“I – ”

“ _Arya_.” Catelyn Stark was brimming with censure. She shot her youngest daughter a glare that promised punishment.

“You can’t ask that, Arya,” Sansa hissed under her breath.

Robb and Jon shifted, mirrors in different shades, uneasy but interested.

“Well he _wants_ you to, doesn’t he?”

It was a rhetorical question spoken with Arya’s plain impatience, suggesting that Brienne was being stubbornly, willfully slow.

“Yes.”

The word was heavy in her mouth, but as the caveats fell away her admission winged across the table, releasing everyone’s breath. Brienne felt her own chest ease as she finally confessed what everyone had known for months.

“Yes, I like Jaime,” she said, blushing and snatching up her water. Her fingers were steady on the glass; she concentrated on her pulse drumming against the condensation.

Mr. Stark cleared his throat, clueless and uncomfortable.

“Damn it,” Jon muttered.

Brienne’s eyes climbed the space in front of him as she chanced a look at his expression.

“Sorry,” he shrugged ruefully. “I just hate for the asshole to get what he wants.”

The look Mrs. Stark shot him could have chipped ice.

“If they get together it thwarts Cersei’s plans,” Robb pointed out. “If only one of the Lannisters can be miserable, I’d rather it was her.”

“She’s too good for him,” Bran muttered, looking at Brienne, then around the table. “Isn’t that what all of you said?”

Brienne bunkered down in her seat. Sweat dampened her socks, pricked heat along her spine.

“ _I_ think it’s awesome,” Arya declared. “He’s been unbearable with the – “ she pantomimed gagging, “ _gaga eyes_ and the annoying following you around. I thought Cersei was going to have a cow when she couldn’t scare him off you.”

“Why –“ Brienne realized she was rapidly shifting from ‘guest’ to ‘family discussion.’ “Never mind,” she muttered, filling her mouth with pasta from the wrong fork.

She almost choked when Mrs. Stark spoke.

“If you can’t see why, you’re blinder than everyone at this table.”

The words refused opposition. One by one her children nodded, Arya still rolling her eyes while Sansa gave Brienne a sweet, encouraging smile and the boys shrugged various degrees of compliance. Even Mr. Stark nodded briefly, though Brienne suspected it was nothing more than politeness.

“Um,” she muttered, toying with her food. “Thanks.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” Mrs. Stark corrected, motioning with her eyes to call Brienne’s attention to her improper silverware.

Brienne refocused on her forks, glad for the distraction, and when she glanced up for Mrs. Stark’s approval the woman was smiling at her with something like pride.

Brienne helped clean up and then Mrs. Stark drove her back to the empty school parking lot. The sky had settled into blue-gray twilight, and the older woman waited until she reached her car safely before smiling and waving goodbye.

Brienne felt a strong desire to go home and curl up next to her dad, to rest her head on his shoulder and let him lull her to sleep with his voice. She wanted to lose herself in the adventures he handpicked for her, nod off in a world that made her feel strong and bold and almost pretty. A world she was terrified to glimpse beyond the worn spine of her favorite novels.

She glanced up at the football field, the equipment shed barely visible beyond the bleachers. She could tell her dad everything, about the bet and the fallout and all the things she wasn’t equipped to handle. She knew that he was home, ready to offer what comfort he could.

Instead she sat in her car contemplating the black shell of West Eros High. There was nothing daunting about it in the dark: no jeers or sneers; no friendly smiles; no golden white grins. The charcoals and blacks were crisp and fuss-free against the messy colors of daylight.

Brienne leaned back against the headrest. She bit her lip, tongued the chapped skin to feel sparks that flickered to life anytime she let her mind drift. She’d been wrecked with memorized sensation for days: hands and lips ghosting across her heart, a lurch at the echo of a laugh, a new missed call buzzing against her leg.

Her fingers dug into her pocket, and she didn’t let herself think as she dialed her voicemail and hit _play_. 

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is quite helpful and much beloved!


End file.
